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 Travel & Outdoors | February 2006 
Acapulco Wants the Old Buzz Back
 Eliza Barclay - Houston Chronicle
| | Hurricane damage elsewhere helps along a rebound for a Mexican resort that is in recovery mode. |
Acapulco, Mexico - Though the new generation of revelers seeking fun and sun may not care that this was once the hangout of Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra, they are drawn by the buzz that has kick-started this aged resort in recent years.
"Since December, we've seen a solid increase in total reservations," said Mary Bertha Medina, president of the Association of Hotels and Tourist Businesses of Acapulco.
Tourists looking for beach vacations lost some options when Hurricane Wilma struck the Gulf Coast on Oct. 22, decimating beaches, palm trees and giant resort hotels, and causing an estimated $1.5 billion in damage.
The disasters last fall have added momentum to a drive to revive Acapulco, which has long suffered in comparison to new destinations. In the '60s and '70s, Acapulco's glamorous aura drew such celebrities as Brigitte Bardot and Elvis Presley.
But when the Mexican government launched its ambitious "planned destination" tourism scheme in the 1980s, building and promoting full-service resorts like Cancún and Los Cabos, Acapulco began losing its allure.
"Other resorts opened and became super competitive," said Felix Ávila Díaz, the sub-secretary of the Guerrero state tourism secretariat. "Guerrero is a poor state, and for years the government didn't invest in the infrastructure here."
Government officials have also had to wrestle with the discovery of pollution in the blue-green bay and episodes of violence sparked by rival drug gangs in recent years.
Despite the threats to its image, with the help of several new flights from American cities like Houston, New York and Los Angeles, Acapulco is beginning to regain some of its former trendiness.
"Acapulco has seen 10 percent growth every year in the last two years," said Irma Díaz, sales executive for the luxury hotel Las Brisas. "I think this mostly has to do with all the new international flights from the United States."
"Acapulco now has high-end shopping malls and excellent night life," Diaz added.
Gulf Coast still recovering
It will take until late this year before the major Gulf Coast resorts will be back to normal. As of Feb. 17, Cancún had about 15,000 out of 26,000 rooms open, according to the Caribe Mexicano Tourist Services Report.
But even as some tourists have been forced to find alternatives, many are drawn to destinations like Acapulco for other reasons.
Some tourists, like Jodi Hawkins and Kathleen Jurries from southern Minnesota, said they chose Acapulco because of the weather and the price.
"We come here for the sun," Hawkins said. "We once went to Cancún and it was cloudy. Here you have a guarantee of good weather."
Jurries noted there's a tradeoff between Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta. While Acapulco had its downsides — with more places with garbage on the ground and in the ocean — the price was better than Puerto Vallarta, another resort popular with American tourists on the Pacific coast.
Media reports in recent years of pollution in Acapulco's bay have also been a negative, but Diaz said intensive efforts to clean it up are already in progress.
"The bad publicity about the pollution here has affected the destination," Diaz said. "But Mexicans as well as foreigners are very conscientious about their health and won't stand for dirty water."
More flights
Airlines, which can play a major role in the flow of tourists with their scheduling decisions, say they have been reducing flights to resorts on the Gulf of Mexico and increasing flights to destinations on the Pacific side.
Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta are doing well and have seen the opportunity they had to absorb some of Cancún's tourism, said Pete Garcia, Continental Airlines' vice president for Latin America.
"We've increased out capacity in Mexico to about 60 flights since October and see greater activity in and growth in those markets," he said.
There's a limit to how much business Acapulco can add this spring. Some hotels here are already booked for the spring break season.
"Travel agencies have been asking us for more rooms because their clients were booked in Cancún, but we're already completely full for the month of March," said Tomy Martinez, sales manager at the Copacabana Beach Hotel.
Another key to Acapulco's rebound was courting what are known as "los spring breakers."
The Copacabana Beach Hotel, a tower with 430 rooms, was one of the first hotels in Acapulco to attract the spring break college crowd by offering weeklong student packages in March around 1998, said Martinez, the sales manager.
The hotel also features special break activities by the pool, like wet T-shirt and beer-drinking contests.
"The spring breakers had a bad reputation for destroying property, but we require them to sign a letter and make a deposit," Martinez said.
A typical weeklong spring break package at Copacabana runs $550 for seven nights, three meals a day, and unlimited alcoholic drinks from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Martinez said that their success in courting the spring breakers has proved profitable and other Acapulco hotels have done the same.
Still, Ávila Díaz, the Guerrero tourism official, acknowledged Acapulco has not yet clinched the image as a top destination for spring breakers. The holy grail in this quest is a featured spot on MTV Spring Break, which helped popularize the hedonistic abandon associated with college students in tropical locales.
"We are talking with MTV about filming here this year," said Avila Diaz, adding that MTV has scoped out Acapulco. "Getting on television is extremely important."
Shootouts, drug trafficking
Recent episodes of violence related to drug trafficking and a spate of shootouts between local drug gangs have been a source of concern that Acapulco may begin to scare away foreign tourists.
Mexico's secretary of the interior, Carlos Abascal Carranza, recently said Guerrero state is one of the "red spotlight" states for safety.
And the business community has expressed concern that unless the violence comes to a halt immediately, investors may shy away from Acapulco and other hot spots in the future.
"Violence is not the friend of investment," said Alberto Núńez Esteva, the president of the Confederation of Employers of the Mexican Republic, during a recent news conference.
But according to Ávila Díaz, the Guerrero tourism official, the incidents in Acapulco occurred in the urban center of Acapulco, far from the tourist zone.
"The two parts of the city are very separate," he said. "But even so the government acted very quickly, and now there's a lot more security than there was before."
Medina, with the hotel and tourist business association, added that so far the violence had not hurt reservations.
Despite the speculation that tourists might head elsewhere or avoid Mexico altogether, interviews with tourists in Acapulco did not indicate that it was a big concern for them.
"We wanted to get away from the cold and snow," said Jennifer Jahnke, 31, of Milwaukee. "We're having a great time." |
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